Names in the news, Feb. 18

Two legendary actors — Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow — are competing for the supporting actor trophy this Oscar season. Despite their pedigree — Plummer has been acting in films for more than 50 years and is best known as Captain von Trapp in 1965’s “The Sound of Music,” and Von Sydow is closely associated with the seminal Swedish director Ingmar Bergman — neither has won an Academy Award. But that’s likely to change. Plummer has already won numerous awards for his turn as a widower who comes out of the closet in “Beginners,” while Von Sydow has earned kudos as an elderly man who doesn’t speak in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.” If either wins, he will become the oldest performer to garner an acting Oscar. Both are 82 years old, with Von Sydow, who turns 83 in April, eight months older than Plummer. … The distributor in Serbia of Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut — a love story set in the Bosnian war — said Friday the movie will start showing here next week, but without the red-carpet premiere it had in Bosnia. Zoran Savic of Millennium Film said “the movie will be shown normally, so whoever wants to see it will have a chance to do so.” Jolie’s “In the Land of Blood and Honey” has triggered outrage among Serbs, who claim it depicts them as the only villains of the 1992-95 Bosnian war. The drama about a Serb soldier who finds his ex-lover, a Muslim Bosnian woman, among sex slaves in a camp, received a standing ovation at the Sarajevo screening Tuesday. Later Friday, Jolie attended the premiere of her movie in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Croatia was also devastated by the war in the early 1990s that erupted after the former Yugoslavia broke up.